Archive | International news

Lithuanian city holds end-of-winter festival, sends anti-Semitic invitations. The mayor of a Lithuanian city invited residents to a party in honor of a local holiday – and included anti-Semitism on the invitation. During the holiday, local residents “chase away” the winter, but Jewish residents of the town say the anti-Semitic undertones grow stronger every year, […]

For the students it was a “obligated holiday.” Flyers promised 400 rubles “for three hours of work”, actually to participate in the “Anniversary celebrations.” Several representatives of political parties and nationalist movements have repeated the proposal to make March 18 an official holiday, and – to the glory of the Crimean referendum – a fixed […]

March 6, 2017 (JTA) — Ukrainian Jews protested the attendance at an international symposium on the Holocaust by a state historian who praised a Nazi collaborator whose troops killed Jews. Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, last week condemned the planned attendance of Volodymyr Vyatrovych, director of Ukrainian National Memory Institute, at a conference […]

Chabad emissary has been deemed a threat to national security, worrying a community that finds itself living in an increasingly authoritarian state By Cnaan Liphshiz February 14, 2017 Rabbis Ari Edelkopf, center, and Berel Lazar, right, listen to a speech at a reception of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia in Sochi, Russia, Feb. […]

February 13, 2017 Vitaly Milonov at President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly at the Kremlin in Moscow, Dec. 1, 2016. (Anatoliy Zhdanov/Kommersant via Getty Images) (JTA) — A Russian lawmaker in President Vladimir Putin’s party said the ancestors of two Jewish opposition politicians had killed Christians. “Christians survived despite the fact that […]

By ROBERT HERSOWITZ July 28, 2016 Those who had survived the 25 years of forced conscription in the tsar’s army were brought to be reintegrated into Jewish life. Most knew nothing about their heritage or religion. Two Jewish boys conscripted into the tsar’s Army, in Lithuania in the late 19th century. The photo was found […]

The international human rights group Agora says Russian authorities have declared war on the Internet Feb 10, 2017 — 19:00 — Update: Feb. 10 2017 — 17:12 By Daria Litvinova Writing about Crimea, Ukraine, Syria or religion on social media in Russia has become a dangerous business. Saying — or typing — the wrong thing […]

Paul Berger Holocaust restitution money is supposed to heal wounds. But the Lithuanian government’s payment of $40 million to the country’s small Jewish community has reopened a decades-long dispute between Lithuania’s Jewish leadership and a Chabad rabbi from Boston. Arguments over the money have swelled into a debate about who better represents Lithuanian Jewry — […]

February 8, 2017 (JTA) — An American rabbi who has worked for the Chabad movement in Russia since 2002 said he and his family are facing deportation under a provision dealing with threats to national security. Ari Edelkopf, a father of seven who grew up in the United States and lived in Israel before settling in […]

Looters dig up mass graves of Holocaust victims, desecrate remains in search for gold teeth and jewelry. Arutz Sheva Staff Marker of Jewish grave desecrated by looters Press release The remains of Jews murdered during the Holocaust have become the target of grave robbers across the Ukraine, say local Jews, who claim the […]